1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a symbol display device mounted in a game machine, such as a roulette game machine. The symbol display device displays the win or the loss of the game by rotating and stopping rotational members having predetermined symbols.
2. Description Related to the Prior Art
A symbol display device mounted in a slot game machine or a Pachinko game machine generally uses reels arranged in lines or in a matrix. Some symbol display devices use a liquid crystal display to simulate rotation of the reels. For instance, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication (JP-A) No. 2000-116843 describes a symbol display device that determines the win or lose in accordance with combinations of the symbols displayed on a rotary reel (first display) having a transparent window and a second display inside the first display. The second display is a liquid crystal display panel or another rotary reel having a diameter different from that of the first display. Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,152,529 describes another example of the symbol display device that uses double structured reel composed of an outer reel having an opening and an inner reel disposed inside the outer reel. The game machines with the symbol display devices described above may change the symbols twice and provide a variety of symbol display patterns.
However, since the second display provided inside the first display is validated only when the transparent window or the opening stop on a predetermined winning line, which is not always happened, it is not possible to use the second display effectively. Accordingly, such symbol display devices have limitations to provide various display patterns of symbols. In order to provide various display patterns of symbols by use of the second display devices in the outer reels, all of the outer reels need to have transparent windows or the openings.
The symbol display device, described in Japanese Utility-Model Publication No. H07-22301, has three concentric rotary disks. The player wins if a predetermined combination of the symbols on the rotary disks is displayed in a radial direction. Such symbol display device may be more compact than that having mechanical reels arranged in lines or in a matrix. Such symbol display device, however, has insufficient display patterns in a game because a player can observe all the symbols. Thus, sufficient appeal to a player is not expected.
In order to solve the above problems, a symbol display device, described in JP-A H06-327807, has a first display device having a round rotator, for example, and a second display device having mechanical reels disposed inside of the round rotator. When a player plays a game machine that mounts such symbol display device, the first display device executes roulette game, and the second display device is operated if the player wins in the roulette game. If the player wins in the slot game executed by the second display device, the points gained by winning in the slot game is added to the points gained in the roulette game, so as to encourage the player's expectation to win. Although playing different games continuously may prevent a player from being dull, a game machine is not organized as the first and the second display devices are less associated with each other.